Google entered TV streaming with a feature-rich service at an aggressive price.

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YouTube announced its long-rumored YouTube TV nearly two years ago, plunging the online video platform into the competitive world of live TV streaming. On the surface, the $40-per-month YouTube TV looks like a good deal: dozens of broadcast and cable channels (including numerous sports networks), a cloud-based DVR service, up to three simultaneous streams, and more.

But YouTube TV faces a lot of competition in an ever-growing industry. The biggest challengers—DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV—offer many similar features to Google's service, and that will undoubtably make it difficult for aspiring cord-cutters to know if they should wait for YouTube's service or take the plunge now. To aid in that decision, here's a breakdown of these four TV-streaming services and their major features.

The first thing to note about YouTube TV is that it will launch with just one subscription tier. Everything the service offers will be included in the $40-per-month price—at least for now. As YouTube and Google land deals with other networks, we could see YouTube TV expand into higher-priced subscription tiers. But since there's just one plan right now, it makes it easy to compare it to the base-tier packages of DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV. In this comparison, we're only looking at live TV-streaming services, not online video streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Video.

Further Reading

The most important factor for all of these TV-streaming services is the array of channels you get for the least amount of money. All but Sling TV offer over 40 channels with their base subscription tier (Sling TV starts off lower than the rest, with $25 for 30 channels). YouTube TV also partnered with local news stations so you can watch local news and weather broadcasts for your area, similar to DirecTV's local offerings. However, YouTube hasn't detailed how extensive these partnerships are, so it's possible some local stations around the country are not included.

YouTube TV is also one of the few services to stream CBS. Sling doesn't offer CBS at all, and Playstation Vue is limited to only some local CBS news feeds across the country. The absence of CBS from these services is likely due to its own streaming offering, CBS All Access. This $6-per-month plan gives subscribers access to live streams of local CBS programming, including new show episodes, on-demand access to over 8,500 old episodes, and limited commercials. CBS All Access appears to be more of an add-on subscription for those who already pay for cable and really love CBS shows rather than an all-in-one solution since it only provides one network's programming.

But CBS All Access also has a $10-per-month tier that offers something none of the other TV-streaming services do: commercial-free viewing. Of course, even with CBS All Access, that comes with an asterisk—live TV will still include commercials, and some shows will have "promotional interruptions."

Even if it's not truly commercial-free, it is worth noting since YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV all have advertisements in both live TV and on-demand content. The only way you can have an ad-free experience on YouTube TV is to also subscribe to YouTube Red, which removes ads on all YouTube content. However, even with a $10-per-month Red subscription, live TV will still have commercials, and we assume content saved to your DVR will also be infiltrated with ads.

What about sportsball?

When it comes to sports channels, YouTube TV has the upper hand. For $40 per month, you get over 20 channels including ESPN, Fox Sports, Comcast SportsNet, and NBC Sports Network. That's the most offered by any base subscription, and you can watch most of those games on your desktop, on TV, or a mobile device. The only exception we know of now is NFL content on mobile devices—Verizon already has a deal with the NFL to stream games on mobile, so you can only watch NFL content on a desktop or on a TV using YouTube TV.

Football should be an area where DirecTV has an advantage over YouTube TV thanks to its NFL Sunday Ticket package, but you can't purchase that if you only subscribe to DirecTV Now. NFL Sunday Ticket is only available to full DirecTV subscribers, but the company has hinted at plans to have the NFL Sunday Ticket as an add-on to its streaming service in the future.

DirecTV Now has also been plagued by glitches and outages since it launched at the end of 2016, and many of those frustrations have centered around blocked or unstreamable sports games. It has sometimes been unclear whether the problems were caused by technical issues or by licensing discrepancies, but DirecTV details in a help article that some regional games thought to be included in the service may not actually be available due to licensing restrictions.

We didn't know how smoothly YouTube TV would perform when it first came out. It has had a few bumps in the road (including an outage in the fall of 2018 that Google compensated for by giving subscribers one week of free service), but otherwise performance seems to be reliable even as the service has expanded to cover more cities. But remember: all TV streaming services like YouTube TV require a reliable Internet network. If your home network or Wi-Fi is spotty, the quality of your TV streaming will suffer.

Further Reading

YouTube TV may offer the most complete lineup of channels available in any base package, but it doesn't have the most channel options. That title is split between DirecTV Now and Sling TV. DirecTV Now offers more than 125 channels when you subscribe to its $75-per-month package, but that puts it closer to regular cable prices than the rest. Sling TV has three basic tiers with over 30, 40, and 50 channels included, plus 24 add-on packages available that include other sports, comedy, kid, and foreign language networks.

Sling is definitely the way to go if you watch a lot of foreign-language TV since it offers Spanish, French, Italian, Hindi, Chinese, and Arabic channels, but DirecTV Now offers a lot of specialized and affiliate channels including BBC World News, CNBC World, Discovery Life, Disney Junior, and Nat Geo Wild, among others. But you get what you pay for—all of those perks are in add-ons or expanded packages of both DirecTV Now and Sling TV. Similar to regular cable packages, extra channels require extra money.

Arguably YouTube TV's standout feature is its cloud-based DVR service. You can record as many shows as you want, simultaneously, and all of that content gets saved to your cloud DVR. There are no time- or storage-based limits, either, letting you record endless amounts of live TV to watch at a later time.

PlayStation Vue and Sling TV both have cloud DVR services as well, but they're more limited. Vue only stores your shows for up to 28 days, and Sling's optional DVR gives you 50 hours of recording time but it costs extra. DirecTV Now finally introduced its cloud DVR service after months of waiting, but it only gives you 20 hours of recording time. YouTube TV keeps your recorded content for nine months before it deletes the oldest stuff, so you won't feel rushed to catch up on old Empire episodes.

Splitting streams

Another important-yet-subtle feature is the ability for multiple people to use the same TV-streaming account at once. Individual, simultaneous streams let members of the same family or household pay for just one account while being able to watch different shows at the same time.

YouTube TV was a bit misleading about this when it first debuted. Included in a $40 subscription are six individual profiles, meaning six different people could log in to the same YouTube TV account and receive personalized recommendations, record shows using the DVR, and more. However, a subscription is only allowed three simultaneous video streams, so a six-member household won't be able to watch different content at one time. This likely won't be a huge problem if all six members are part of a family living under one roof together, but it will complicate things if six friends who live separately wanted to split a YouTube TV account.

Further Reading

But YouTube isn't the only company fudging the details about simultaneous streams. PlayStation Vue supports five streams at once, but there are some hidden caveats to that. Each PlayStation Vue account can support up to five connected devices at once, meaning you can download the Vue app and log in to your account on five devices (which should cover all of the devices in your home, including a smartphone, tablets, TVs, and consoles). But each household is only allowed to have one PS4 and one PS3 streaming at the same time, and you can't stream to two PS4 or two PS3 consoles simultaneously. If you follow that rule, you can still load up to three more simultaneous streams on PCs and mobile devices.

Sling TV is more transparent, but it has the worst policy for its base subscription tier. You only get one stream with Sling Orange, but if you upgrade to Sling Blue, you'll get three simultaneous streams. DirecTV Now doesn't hide the fact that you'll get two concurrent streams with your subscription—but if you pay an extra $5 per month, you can get a third stream.

It's clear YouTube spent time studying its competition before announcing YouTube TV. The service fills a lot of holes found in DirecTV, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV, but it also has some holes of its own. Currently the biggest issue for YouTube TV is lack of tier variety: there's only one subscription offering, so it probably won't be the service for you if it's missing even one of your must-have channels.

YouTube TV has a solid array of channels, and since its inception, it has added additional channels into its one subscription tier as well as new add-ons users can pay extra for. YouTube TV also includes its YouTube Red Original content, but it's unlikely that will draw as many customers as networks such as HBO or Starz. It may have the least variety of all competing TV services, but users get a lot in their $40 monthly fee.

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Valentina Palladino
Valentina reviews consumer electronics for Ars Technica, testing all kinds of gadgets with a focus on mobile devices and wearables. She has a soft spot for Chromebooks. Twitter@valentinalucia

201 Reader Comments

Back in 2007 there was this Youtube prank that said that there was such at thing as Google TV. One of the many links:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77OQrYZP6CQI can't find the original fake instructions on how to get Google TV to work.

Google gives you 6 DVRs where each has unlimited tuners and each tuner unlimited storage. Imo, no contest on the superior offering. But then consider the Google infrastructure. Google gives priority to these streams you are going to get a superior user experience.

I also imagine Youtube TV will have a much more robust streaming infrastructure.

You would imagine, but that honor goes to Netflix, which has not only the hardware and protocols, but the contracts - wherein they've been willing to own up to their responsibility and pay for the data they want to deliver to their customers.

Eleven years now, and Youtube still doesn't address, nor own, buffering issues. Sure, fans will blame the ISPs, but for how long?

Its conceivable that they will behave differently with a paid product, but incredibly unlikely. Google Fiber TV has never offered a competitive/low-cost un-bundled product, and in fact, they've implemented some hefty rate increases lately.

What would be great information to have is what frame rate each service delivers, on what channels, on what viewing devices. I've been looking into this lately and it's not easy to find anywhere. I view these services as a great way to toggle on a sports bundle for 6-8 weeks during playoffs, and then turn them off again. For that use case quality of the stream is the most important factor.

I also imagine Youtube TV will have a much more robust streaming infrastructure.

You would imagine, but that honor goes to Netflix, which has not only the hardware and protocols, but the contracts - wherein they've been willing to own up to their responsibility and pay for the data they want to deliver to their customers.

Eleven years now, and Youtube still doesn't address, nor own, buffering issues. Sure, fans will blame the ISPs, but for how long?

Youtube is mostly ok for me, with only the occasional issue on the more obscure videos. Youtube has probably 1000x the content of Netflix, so things like ISP-based caching is trickier.

Youtube could probably cache something like the last 24 hours of Youtube TV content in their ISP boxes and with their CDN and deliver much better reliability and buffering than on that odd 3 year old 5 minute video with 6,000 views.

Just want to say some good things about SlingTV. When I was thinking about cutting cord back in the days because it's silly to pay $50 a month when we only watch 2-3 hours at night, my wife told me she's fine as long as she gets CNN, FOOD, and HGTV. For me I watch ESPN and TNT for NBA, and Comedy and Cartoon for fun. For $20/month, I think SlingTV is still the cheapest way to get the combination of these channels.

So we've been on SlingTV since its inception, and I honestly have not have much issues at all. I watch mostly on Roku3 using wifi over Verizon FIOS, or sometimes on my phone Tmobile 4g. One problem I did have was with disney family steam being pixelated for a stretch about 3-4 month ago, but it's been fine since.

honestly our TV viewing habit has evolved to the point that we can probably be just fine watching all the shows on-demand with hulu, and just get news clips from news sites, but sometimes you just want to "checkout what's on TV" and the spontaneity that comes from channel flipping is difficult to replicate, so I think there's still a role for cable/broadcast TV service, but I definitely won't pay more then $20 for that.

I had PS Vue for a little over a month back in October. It was neat and different than the Dish we had been using, but you get what you pay for. Channels would sometimes just give errors during a stream, which would sometimes not cause the loss of what was being watched, but sometimes would lead to a black screen. Exiting the app (we used it on a PS4) and restarting would usually fix the channel issues. Meanwhile, you've missed anything that happened if it was live. There is no way to pad the DVR times for a show, so every single @Midnight episode I DVRd would miss the very end. Same thing happened with many of the Disney shows for my kid. When PS Vue dropped the Viacom channels and I lost Comedy Central, combined with the streaming issues and the DVR issues, we went back to Dish.

Yeah I'm paying twice as much as what I was with PS Vue, but at least the DVR works, shows won't get cut off, I can keep them longer than 28 days, and there's no issues with buffering or streaming with Dish. Unless Google can fix these types of issues with their offering, I doubt my wife will let me switch again for a long time.

And plenty of sports fans don't care about AMC or IFC. Believe it or don't, but for the most part you pay for what you watch. Sportsball fans are paying for their sports channels, and drama fans are paying for their scripted tv channels. Those of us who like all of it get off a little more cheaply, perhaps.

Everything I've heard points to ESPN and other sports channels being much more expensive than other channels.

Those multi-million dollar contracts for athletes aren't coming out of thin air.

ESPN charges cable companies ~$7/mo/sub, which is highest in the basic-cable industry by a wide margin. HBO and other premium channels cost more, but no one includes those in the basic package.

Once you add up all the sports channels (and sports-adjacent channels like TNT and TBS) you get to roughly $17/mo/sub. It's not nothing, but it isn't as big of a portion of your bill as you'd think.

The $25/mo Sling Blue is the closest you'll get to a "cheaper plan without sports" among these offerings. The Fox Sports RSNs are kind of expensive, but nowhere near ESPN.

assuming its really $17 for sports thats $17 a month we non sports fans are paying extra each month for no benefit. might as well make it a sports package for $17 a month.

Until you do the math and realize that this implies that you'd somehow be able to get all the broadcast networks, plus the FX networks, SyFy, Disney, FreeForm, USA, NatGeo, all the news networks, etc. for like $18 a month if only you could just axe the sports out of YouTube TV (at $17 or so).

This, despite CBS charging $6 a month for a standalone subscription.

It's pure fantasy.

I don't know about these fantasies, but it seems odd that you cannot get a cable/streaming package without sports in the US. We manage in the UK just fine.

Which bundle doesn't include sports? Because even the cheapest "Original" bundle appears, from a cursory review of Sky's site, to include at least a few sports-oriented channels including at least one that's dedicated to showing live sports. From what I can tell Sky Sports Mix alone seems to air a bit of just about everything but the Prem...similar, one might suggest, to the fact that ESPN actually only airs a single NFL game each week.

The Sky Sports addition adds another eight channels including what appears to be like every single Premier League match, so that's not at all equivalent to the ESPN/FS1 that tends to be included in lower-tier cable channels in the US.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. Most of the shows on these channels are available whenever you want to watch them on these services and no need to "DVR' episodes as they are there to watch when you want to. I know they are trying to be more of a hybrid "cable" service, but even that is an outdated concept. We don't need more cable services or hybrids of them. Still paying for numerous channels you would never watch.

I was hoping Google would get with the times and be more like a streaming service like the other two while also bringing something new to the table. Guess they are still stuck in the early 2000's on this one.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. Most of the shows on these channels are available whenever you want to watch them on these services and no need to "DVR' episodes as they are there to watch when you want to. I know they are trying to be more of a hybrid "cable" service, but even that is an outdated concept. We don't need more cable services or hybrids of them. Still paying for numerous channels you would never watch.

I was hoping Google would get with the times and be more like a streaming service like the other two while also bringing something new to the table. Guess they are still stuck in the early 2000's on this one.

Could be a licensing thing, if they make it fully on demand it's one type of license but if they show it "live" with optional viewer directed recording it's another type of licensing. It's like when people complain about big multinationals not offering services in their country, well that's usually because the local rights holders didn't want to negotiate with them.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. Most of the shows on these channels are available whenever you want to watch them on these services and no need to "DVR' episodes as they are there to watch when you want to. I know they are trying to be more of a hybrid "cable" service, but even that is an outdated concept. We don't need more cable services or hybrids of them. Still paying for numerous channels you would never watch.

I was hoping Google would get with the times and be more like a streaming service like the other two while also bringing something new to the table. Guess they are still stuck in the early 2000's on this one.

Could be a licensing thing, if they make it fully on demand it's one type of license but if they show it "live" with optional viewer directed recording it's another type of licensing. It's like when people complain about big multinationals not offering services in their country, well that's usually because the local rights holders didn't want to negotiate with them.

It would be nice if when a show debuts it is simply as an on demand program for a few days or weeks. Maybe even tie it to a channel/timeline/grid view where you can view past dates as well as upcoming. Then let people save a show, just like with a DVR, if they wanted it longer than when it's automatically available. Besides, they are probably doing something similar to this on the back end anyway, so they might as well just make it more useful to the customer. I guess the main difference is they would be saving it with commercials embedded instead of a raw show like Netflix ends up getting.

But either way it makes sense to just go ahead and offer it as on-demand. I mean, how do any of the networks (or the companies paying for the commercials) benefit from me missing a new show because I forgot to set the DVR on the first episode? Previously VCR/DVR's were a product of technology limitation because true on-demand TV wasn't really possible 10-20 years ago. But now with the DVR being part of the stream provider it's kind of crazy to enforce the old DVR limitations.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. Most of the shows on these channels are available whenever you want to watch them on these services and no need to "DVR' episodes as they are there to watch when you want to. I know they are trying to be more of a hybrid "cable" service, but even that is an outdated concept. We don't need more cable services or hybrids of them. Still paying for numerous channels you would never watch.

I was hoping Google would get with the times and be more like a streaming service like the other two while also bringing something new to the table. Guess they are still stuck in the early 2000's on this one.

Could be a licensing thing, if they make it fully on demand it's one type of license but if they show it "live" with optional viewer directed recording it's another type of licensing. It's like when people complain about big multinationals not offering services in their country, well that's usually because the local rights holders didn't want to negotiate with them.

It would be nice if when a show debuts it is simply as an on demand program for a few days or weeks. Maybe even tie it to a channel/timeline/grid view where you can view past dates as well as upcoming. Then let people save a show, just like with a DVR, if they wanted it longer than when it's automatically available. Besides, they are probably doing something similar to this on the back end anyway, so they might as well just make it more useful to the customer. I guess the main difference is they would be saving it with commercials embedded instead of a raw show like Netflix ends up getting.

But either way it makes sense to just go ahead and offer it as on-demand. I mean, how do any of the networks (or the companies paying for the commercials) benefit from me missing a new show because I forgot to set the DVR on the first episode? Previously VCR/DVR's were a product of technology limitation because true on-demand TV wasn't really possible 10-20 years ago. But now with the DVR being part of the stream provider it's kind of crazy to enforce the old DVR limitations.

Two quick things.

One, I think we'll have to wait and see what the service looks like. As it stands, Sling already offers this on many channels....shows are available on-demand shortly after air, usually for the duration of the season. Commercials remain embedded (and are unskippable). YTTV may wind up with a similar feature, because you're right...networks like FX or AMC gain little from my inability to catch up on their shows; the odds are that I'll pirate them or skip them entirely, rather than buy the episode a la carte.

Two, you have to look at which ads are being aired and watched by subscribers. One thing I've noticed on Sling is that, from what I can tell, the ads on a network like FX are not the ads they show on Comcast. Presumably because the advertisers didn't pay for Sling eyeballs, because they don't value Sling eyeballs. So instead it's a lot of near-informercial ads for weird as-seen-on-TV stuff, wall to wall. No ads for current movies, popular products, or common services. So the ads being embedded with the stream are lower-value ads than what would have been present on a DVR. I'm not sure exactly how this impacts licensing negotiations, but it definitely does.

It would be nice if when a show debuts it is simply as an on demand program for a few days or weeks. Maybe even tie it to a channel/timeline/grid view where you can view past dates as well as upcoming. Then let people save a show, just like with a DVR, if they wanted it longer than when it's automatically available. Besides, they are probably doing something similar to this on the back end anyway, so they might as well just make it more useful to the customer. I guess the main difference is they would be saving it with commercials embedded instead of a raw show like Netflix ends up getting....

A Chinese-language IPTV service, KylinTV, offered this. They basically had a buffer of about a week per channel, and you could use the guide to navigate backwards and start any show. The recorded stream still had commercials, but you could skip through them like a DVR.

I think it's mainly the TV channels themselves that don't like this. The On-Demand options that the cable providers give for missed shows often lock out FF so you can't skip commercials. I know that Time Warner has a "start over" feature that lets you go back to the beginning of the current show, but then locks out FF.

As for why, Cable channels seem remiss to go full on-demand. I think they still want the most Live or Live+3 (3 days after first broadcast) numbers for their Nielsen ratings so they can sell advertising. By not letting people simply catch up whenever, it encourages people to DVR it, and at least with traditional DVRs the rapidly filling up storage encourages people to watch their recordings sooner rather than later. Even with the 9-month storage, a new recording will typically pop that show to the top of the recent recordings list, making it more likely for you to watch.

Two, you have to look at which ads are being aired and watched by subscribers. One thing I've noticed on Sling is that, from what I can tell, the ads on a network like FX are not the ads they show on Comcast. Presumably because the advertisers didn't pay for Sling eyeballs...

Typically, a cable channel has a certain number of ads that run nationally that the channel itself sells, then a portion of the ad space is left for the cable carriers to fill, typically at a local level. The cable channel may run some ads during this time, typically network promos for shows and things, but the local provider can override this and run their own ads. You sometimes see this when you see the beginning seconds of an ad before another one airs over it, or the tail end of an ad when it cuts back.

So the ads between carriers will be different, either because one has spot cable ads where the other doesn't, or both have different spot cable ads due to different companies buying ads from the different carriers.

In the past this wouldn't really be noticeable, since there's typically been one cable provider per region. Now with these IPTV offerings, you can see changes by changing providers.

I have DirectTV now and I split it with another person so I am paying $17.50 a month. There were so many bugs with the initial launch, but most of those were squashed. The only complaint I have is there is a big difference in quality of service depending on which device you use. IOS devices like the free Apple TV and iphones work well. I have an Amazon Fire TV and it is buggy, slow at times, freezes and crashes. I wished there was an easy way to restart the program. This is a complaint more with Amazon Fire TV devices because I get weird errors with Netflix also on the Fire TV.

Which bundle doesn't include sports? Because even the cheapest "Original" bundle appears, from a cursory review of Sky's site, to include at least a few sports-oriented channels including at least one that's dedicated to showing live sports. From what I can tell Sky Sports Mix alone seems to air a bit of just about everything but the Prem...similar, one might suggest, to the fact that ESPN actually only airs a single NFL game each week.

The Sky Sports addition adds another eight channels including what appears to be like every single Premier League match, so that's not at all equivalent to the ESPN/FS1 that tends to be included in lower-tier cable channels in the US.

Not so simple after all.

You get A few non premium sports channels which show nothing of interest basically. The sports pack givesYou access to sports people actually want to watch, not just premier league.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix...

I'm not sure what you think Netflix and Hulu are if not on demand streaming services....

That's the point. They are "On Demand" in the sense that you can watch the shows anytime you want (which is something I noted in my first post), the difference being, they don't tout "On Demand" as an added option because it isn't, it's part of the core streaming service. These others tout it like it's something special and extra and, with cable, you usually have to pay for the "On Demand" service as an extra. Again, in that respect, it's an outdated concept.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix...

I'm not sure what you think Netflix and Hulu are if not on demand streaming services....

That's the point. They are "On Demand" in the sense that you can watch the shows anytime you want (which is something I noted in my first post), the difference being, they don't tout "On Demand" as an added option because it isn't, it's part of the core streaming service.

You didn't make this distinction in your original post, you just called on demand an "outdated concept," when it's what's actually an extremely popular and growing concept for video watching.

With cable, you usually have to pay for the "On Demand" service as an extra. Again, in that respect, it's an outdated concept.

Not necessarily. A lot of cable operators offer a lot of free on demand content from the various cable channels, including recently aired shows and even full seasons and movies, especially from premium channels like HBO. The catch is that you have to be "subscribed" to the channel, i.e. it's part of your tier, and there may be "forced" ads if its an ad-supported network show (can't FF).

I use the on-demand feature on FiOS to catch CBS shows that my DVR didn't catch due to, say, a sports game running late. It's no additional cost, as opposed to the online option CBS All-Access which charges a fee for streaming shows on a TV, with ads still.

The real problem resides in the lack of PC and MAC compatibility... if what you say is true... the limitation of device compatibility will be their doom.... Or maybe you just got it wrong and forgot to include the most used devices on the internet.... O .o That's just sad Valentina....

The real problem resides in the lack of PC and MAC compatibility... if what you say is true... the limitation of device compatibility will be their doom.... Or maybe you just got it wrong and forgot to include the most used devices on the internet.... O .o That's just sad Valentina....

A service that works great on all your screens. You can watch YouTube TV on any screen—mobile, tablet or computer—and you can easily stream to your TV with a Google Chromecast or Chromecast built-in TV. YouTube TV works on both Android and iOS. And your cloud DVR goes with you, so you can stream your recordings on any device, whenever and wherever you want.

Which bundle doesn't include sports? Because even the cheapest "Original" bundle appears, from a cursory review of Sky's site, to include at least a few sports-oriented channels including at least one that's dedicated to showing live sports. From what I can tell Sky Sports Mix alone seems to air a bit of just about everything but the Prem...similar, one might suggest, to the fact that ESPN actually only airs a single NFL game each week.

The Sky Sports addition adds another eight channels including what appears to be like every single Premier League match, so that's not at all equivalent to the ESPN/FS1 that tends to be included in lower-tier cable channels in the US.

Not so simple after all.

You get A few non premium sports channels which show nothing of interest basically. The sports pack givesYou access to sports people actually want to watch, not just premier league.

Which, again, is very similar to ESPN and FS1. Both channels spend a lot of hours on sports news (which Sky's "original" bundle also includes) as well as lower-profile sports ranging from auto racing to darts. Very little of the most popular sports programming appears on ESPN/FS1/NBCSN, which are the two or three channels that you have the hardest time keeping out of your more basic cable packages.

Most of the marquee sports content that people actually want to see winds up on higher-tier sports packages, or is already on broadcast networks (or other variety networks). As noted, ESPN/FS1/NBCSN show a grand total of one NFL game weekly. Combined.

EDIT: Regardless your claim that Sky offers a package without sports channels was wrong in its face.

Minor correction - MTV is owned by Viacom, along with Comedy Central, VH1, Nickelodeon, and some others. I remember this because my (traditional) cable provider dropped them two years ago in a contract dispute.

Some of the information in your table is incomplete. You specifically state that SlingTV is available on Android TV but you do not mention that PSVue is available on Android TV as well. It looks like DirectTV now also offers Android TV support.

I thought Vue was only on Android TV for sets built by Sony?

Sorry for responding so late, but no, it's available on other Android TV devices as well. It's available on my Shield for example.

I subscribe to PS Vue. What isn't listed in that comparison chart is the NFL Network, Big 10 Network, and a few other sports channels. You can also get the NFL Red Zone channel for a one-time fee. I also disagree with the starting price. $40 is for cities where all local channels are included. In my area only one of our local channels is included so we only pay $35 a month (which is the middle tier package). I believe there is a cheaper option for $30.

PS Vue is such a great value. We have an Apple TV, two Amazon Fire TVs, a PS4, and an Android TV that run the app.

I'm also a Vue subscriber. We get local Fox, NBC, and CBS for $29.99. I always see the $40 number thrown around, but I don't know where that is coming from unless I am just a special snowflake. I don't find the cloud limit of 28 days to be an issue (I typically don't watch shows a month after they air) although I would be happy if they extended the time limit.

One thing missing from this is the channel guide. On the PS4, web-browser, and FireTV, Vue has a full feature channel guide that I haven't seen on the other services that I've tried (I have not nor will try DirectTV Now though).

You must be a special snowflake or just misinformed. That plus Sony must like overcharging people in some cities. At least Sling TV and DirecTV Now have consistent pricing everywhere.

Here the Vue Access package is $39.99/mo. Core is $44.99Elite is $54.99Ultra is $74.99.

Either way at Vue's price point and lack of many channels that we watch it just isn't an option.

I don't understand your table entry for Playstation Vue at all. First, there's no $40 plan- they're $25, 35, 45 and 65. Second, there are way more sports channels at the $45 level- I see ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPN-U, SEC Network, CSN, NFL Network, Fox College Sports Atlantic/Central/Pacific, BTN, FS1, FS2, just from a quick perusal of their channel listing. Since this is the service I was looking at subscribing to, can you please clarify this?

You need to do some research. Vue charges $10 more in some cities that get more live local channels (Non Slim Pacakges). They are still very inconsistent on how many live locals causes the $10 increase. Some cities have 3 live locals and don't get forced to pay the extra $10/mo in other cities that have 3 or more live locals they do have to pay that extra $10/mo. As far is I know Vue doesn't offer a $25/mo package anywhere.

I have no interest in Youtube TV at $35/mo with that listed channel lineup. It only includes about 6 out of the 20 or so channels that we normally watch. Problem is none of the other OTT services offers all of the programming that we watch either. DirecTV Now comes the closest but their lack of DVR service, which is a must since most On-Demand content contains advertisements that you can't fast-forward over, makes it a non-starter for us. Plus some content is not available On-Demand or it's availability is delayed significantly . Speaking of On-Demand, DirecTV Now's current library is rather sparse while their support for TV Everywhere app logins is also extremely lacking. DirecTV Now still doesn't even offer a native app for Android TV or a Roku channel.

So it's either continue to pay Comcast or subscribe to more than one of these OTT services to get most of the content/features that we want. In the end the pricing is not much different and we still end up paying more than we would like.

On Demand? DVR? Really? These are outdated concepts. There is no need for "On Demand" or "DVR" with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. Most of the shows on these channels are available whenever you want to watch them on these services and no need to "DVR' episodes as they are there to watch when you want to. I know they are trying to be more of a hybrid "cable" service, but even that is an outdated concept. We don't need more cable services or hybrids of them. Still paying for numerous channels you would never watch.

I was hoping Google would get with the times and be more like a streaming service like the other two while also bringing something new to the table. Guess they are still stuck in the early 2000's on this one.

The only way I would give up a DVR feature was if YouTube TV(or any other OTT provider) offered a commercial free plan, like Hulu does, while also guaranteeing that all programming on their carried channels would be available immediately after they aired live.

There is no way I am watching every show On-Demand if I have to sit through a bunch of commercials. Also I am not going to wait several days after a program has aired to watch it.

It doesn't matter because Youtube TV's advertised channel lineup doesn't interest me since most of the channels that we watch aren't even included. So yes, just like Cable and all of the current OTT cable alternative services, I would be paying for channels that I do not watch. Difference is with Cable we may be paying for more channels that we do not watch but at least I get most of the channels that we do watch. I also have a real DVR that allows me to skip through commercials on many shows with the push of a button.

Google gives you 6 DVRs where each has unlimited tuners and each tuner unlimited storage. Imo, no contest on the superior offering. But then consider the Google infrastructure. Google gives priority to these streams you are going to get a superior user experience.

What good is 6 accounts with unlimited DVR if their channel lineup sucks? For me with their advertised channel lineup Youtube TV is not intriguing at all . I would rather have more of the content that I want even if I only get 2 or 3 simultaneous streams.

Absolutely fucking useless. I have no interest in being forced into watching TV shows on a mobile device, and I have no desire to own a Chromecast when I already have an HTPC and a Roku. That has to be one of, if not the most limited set of supported products I've seen for a streaming service ever.

Completely agree. Why would I want to watch a TV service on a tiny screen. Youtube TV has lost the battle before it even started when competing services already offer a better channel selection plus the option to watch their services natively on a big screen using a Roku, Fire TV, Android TV and/or Apple TV. Maybe Youtube TV will eventually offer support for more devices but at release it seems like they will already be far behind the competing services.